Another exposure of JobBridge

A friend of mine, let’s call him Shane, is out of work. He’s not willing to go back at the same ground-level position he entered half a decade ago and has been cast back into by the crisis. He wants a supervisory position in a warehouse. To get this he needs training.

Thankfully, there’s this thing called Jobbridge. You don’t get paid but it offered Shane the warehouse supervisor training he wanted. He was desperate enough to put up with working for nothing (which is effectively all a €50 top-up on your dole amounts to) if it helped him along the direction he wanted to go.

He showed up for the interview for this position in a city centre building. The rooms were lined with wide-screen TVs and comfortable couches. More and more people started arriving.

Soon enough he was called up for the interview and faced a man in another room.

Shane asked him about the warehouse supervisor training position. The man replied that, yes, that’s what was on the ad… But Shane would not be interviewing for that position. Instead this was an interview for a challenging, dynamic position in… Telesales!

So instead of a job where he would be helping in the distribution of food for people to eat, with prospects of promotion, Shane was being offered a job trying to convince people to change from one TV company to another. Handing out flyers on the street, knocking on doors, trying to convince people that their lives would be improved by a marginally different TV service. A footsoldier in the war of attrition between enormous monopolies, who would be receiving zero euros per hour, zero euros per sale. An economic conscript subsidized by the Irish state.

Don’t get the situation wrong, there were prospects for promotion here too! The man said there was one woman who’d taken up this job sometime in the past who was now working for amazing amounts of money, in London.

So, said the man, there were twenty other people in the next room looking for the same job. “Convince me,” he said, “Why should I give you this job?”